FAA vs YouTube Commercial Pilot channel(s)...

I really like Steveo's videos and hope they don't shut him down. The commentary about the different areas of the Bahamas is great, as is the scenery.
 
Ryanb said:
As far as MrAviation, you can't be serious? He's simply recording his personal ventures. No violation with that.
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My comments are meant to be tongue in cheek, shut him down for being kinda douchey.
He frequents a Facebook group I'm in, and when someone called out an error or offered a suggestion he proceeded to berate them, along with a couple of fans of his channel. Not a fan.

i know all of his stuff is personal flying, he holds a commercial and CFI, but couldn't there be a claim that he is receiving compensation from any revenue generated from his channel. Maybe not an issue for him, but there are a couple other channels, Flight Chops( though he's a Canuck so I guess it doesn't matter) and Friendly Skies Film come to my mind, where they are just PPL holders who have a Patreon page where viewers can pledge money each episode. I think if the FAA wanted to come down on them they could.
 
gsengle said:
My fave was the Cirrus pilot 19 year old or so flying an approach to below minimums in a snowstorm while an airliner is holding, and then because it's just for practice he takes off again....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I like the guy who was flying VFR, then filmed and bragged about flying through clouds, I believe he took his videos down.
 
I get a kick out of the voice of the sometimes left seater who flies the Citation with Moonbeam. Old southern boy.

That "beyond mellow"/"disconnected" voice when he's really sitting over there watching everything like a hawk and probably has a bejillion hours. Phrases everything he catches his protege doing wrong as a mello question, "You suppose we should do this, instead?"

I've only seen Moonbeam catch him miss something once (missed item after climb out) and Moonbeam politely says, "XYZ whenever you're ready."

The old southern boy you can hear just a tiny note that he got caught missing something and he says, "Oh alright, if you prefer it that way..."

LOL. I've flown with a couple old southerners with a bunch of experience like that. They're fun. Everything is always "smooooth". Oh they'll tell you off if you say or do something absolutely stupid that needs correcting NOW, but otherwise it's just a jibe and a smile in their southern drawl... and a look. You all know the look.
 
I really like steveo. Does the FAA know how many post videos of them flying for work on Youtube? It's a lot. I really don't get this or what it could be over.

There's a channel on Youtube that estimates how much Youtubers make based on subscribers and views. He has close to 3 millions views a month. This was 6 months ago with 93,000 subscribers (he now has 143K) but they estimated about $41K a year 6 months ago, and that doesn't count his Patreon donors. And he's also sponsored by Foreflight and Bose. That would be a serious hit to his Youtube income. That's a nice 'salary' from Youtube.
 
Hints from Jason Miller (of the Finer Points podcast, not the ForeFlight one) indicate that it's about mounting the camera in the cockpit and scenes that were edited that FAA thought were a continuous take.

Just passing along. I have no direct knowledge.
 
denverpilot said:
Hints from Jason Miller (of the Finer Points podcast, not the ForeFlight one) indicate that it's about mounting the camera in the cockpit and scenes that were edited that FAA thought were a continuous take.

Just passing along. I have no direct knowledge.
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Yeah, I've heard people question him on things like not using a checklist, etc. And he says he edits that stuff out for brevity. 99% of his stuff is edited unless it's a short flight.
 
BrianNC said:
Yeah, I've heard people question him on things like not using a checklist, etc. And he says he edits that stuff out for brevity. 99% of his stuff is edited unless it's a short flight.
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Yeah, well... this is one of the reasons I haven't bothered doing much flight filming. There's definitely a "distraction factor".

I've given Shappert a hard time about babbling in the pattern to the camera... mostly because as a CFI doing CFI type videos, he's setting an expectation for students that "sterile cockpit" is absolutely meaningless -- if you have a YouTube video to shoot. That's not a good standard to set.

The non-CFIs... they can do whatever they like, for all I care... but babbling about stuff like future meet-ups, selling ground school products, and stuff unnecessary for the "lesson" seems like a great way to send the absolute wrong signal to new pilots in CFI style videos.

I'd fire his butt if he did that while he was supposed to be teaching me and paid on my dime in a cockpit. But that's just me.

TEACHING to the camera, heck that's been done and got John and Martha a jet, so I can let that slide. It's the unrelated stuff in the pattern that makes me crazy. Ha. Pet peeve.

I like the guy. Have met him briefly a couple of times and I know he's genuine. He's busting his butt to make a business out of teaching. But I still cringe when I see him talking to a camera and the gear isn't down and he's turning base. C'mon man. Just say no.

Have met a few of the others and genuine is not the word I would use for a couple of them. They all have their own motivations, for better or worse. Some are not the personas they put forth on their videos.

Like I said, if one of them ever screws the pooch, FAA will LOVE having the video available.

My co-owner is into cameras and camera tech. He recently outfitted the airplane with all sorts of cameras. We could easily do some really decent quality videos and multi-angle shots, but I'm quite leery to do it. Two reasons. Good video is scripted, and there's plenty of boring in flight video out there.

But I do think in the multimedia world, videos of flying do serve a purpose in getting folks to the airport who want to fly or think they do. We all enjoy watching the stuff when we can't go flying, too.
 
denverpilot said:
Yeah, well... this is one of the reasons I haven't bothered doing much flight filming. There's definitely a "distraction factor".
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Well, the editing does take place on the ground :)

I only do a few, never of a full flight, and very rarely including cockpit audio. Just a few vignettes of things I think are pretty :)

That's probably why no one except a few friends watches them :D
 
The FAA can't "shut him down." In fact, You Tube is the only one that can do so, and even then, he still has the rest of the internet available to him. The best the FAA can do is force him to "follow the rules" regarding what type of equipment he uses and when he lets the making of the video distract him from flying the plane. If, like others have postulated, it is simply a matter of using cameras with wifi capability, then he just has to buy new cameras. (Boo frickin hoo.)

I like his videos, and have probably watched nearly every one of them, but me thinks he's blowing this out of proportion for publicity's sake.
 
I don't understand why people keep thinking that the FAA said they will shut down his youtube. The FAA never said that and obviously can't. It seems obvious they're telling him to stop making his part 135 flights into videos. The FAA considers the cameras a distraction. He would need to only post the cruise portions of the flight, and remove all of his other videos that include critical phases of flight.
 
JonH said:
I don't understand why people keep thinking that the FAA said they will shut down his youtube. The FAA never said that
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Probably because of what he actually said?

"This week the FAA decided they are coming at me and want to shut down my YouTube channel over certain criteria"


Not saying that's what the FAA ACTUALLY said, but all we have to go on for now is what he wrote.
 
I wonder if the next sponsor on any future videos will be the AOPA Legal Services plan? LOL. It's going to suck losing 1/4 or more of his YouTube revenue to pay his attorney. :)
 
JonH said:
I don't understand why people keep thinking that the FAA said they will shut down his youtube. The FAA never said that and obviously can't. It seems obvious they're telling him to stop making his part 135 flights into videos. The FAA considers the cameras a distraction. He would need to only post the cruise portions of the flight, and remove all of his other videos that include critical phases of flight.
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Why would he need to remove ANY videos? Abrogating First Amendment rights requires justification (like the "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" exception). If, as you suggest, the issue is related to his use of a camera in critical phases of part 135 flights, removing videos that have already been shot would not retroactively make past flights safer, so the justification would not exist.
 
The FAA can't shut down his youtube channel but they can stop him from flying. I like Steveo, and I think he is a great ambassador for aviation in general and more specifically, general aviation. It's tough to determine if the FAA is being heavy handed or unreasonable without knowing what the issue is.
 
PaulS said:
The FAA can't shut down his youtube channel but they can stop him from flying. I like Steveo, and I think he is a great ambassador for aviation in general and more specifically, general aviation. It's tough to determine if the FAA is being heavy handed or unreasonable without knowing what the issue is.
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And as someone else has said, if he's got an attorney and the attorney is smart, he's been told to shut up. So we'll never know until whatever it is, is over with.
 
Steveo is probably my favorite YouTuber. I also enjoy captmoonbeam and the Matt kid in the Bonanza. The Bonanza kid is far more risky than Steveo but out of all 3 of them I've never seen a regulation blatantly violated. Sucks that the FAA is trying to scare someone into removing a part of their livelihood and take away those assets from future pilots. And this is why kids don't want to be pilots. Can't even put a GoPro in you airplane without the FAA getting involved.
 
Z06_Mir said:
Steveo is probably my favorite YouTuber. I also enjoy captmoonbeam and the Matt kid in the Bonanza. The Bonanza kid is far more risky than Steveo but out of all 3 of them I've never seen a regulation blatantly violated. Sucks that the FAA is trying to scare someone into removing a part of their livelihood and take away those assets from future pilots. And this is why kids don't want to be pilots. Can't even put a GoPro in you airplane without the FAA getting involved.
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Welcome to the Feds protecting us from ourselves. It only gets worse.
 
Clark1961 said:
Welcome to the Feds protecting us from ourselves. It only gets worse.
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gsengle said:
I bet their issue wasn't on a part 91 flight....
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I haven't seen Steve or any of the others do anything particularly unsafe other than be distracted by their filming. But for a commercial op, that's probably enough to garner attention.

Private ops probably won't be too far behind, if the powers that be, want to.

The funny part is how long they took to notice. How many years have many of these channels been going on?

Really, the "perfectly correct" way to do flight videos is with a voice-over, recorded after you're back on the ground, if you're the sole PIC. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate, play TV Show host later on the ground -- in that order. LOL.

*Can* many of us talk to ourselves while flying? Sure. CFIs have to talk all the time. Airplane and helicopter tour guides do also. (Although the last time I took a helo tour the operator had a pre-recorded guide that the pilot could override or let play depending on if they were busy.)

The question is, should we, when we don't have to? With paying passengers aboard?

That's probably where FAA is going to poke and prod a bit. They'd probably prefer we fly the airplane and save talking to make voice-overs something done in front of a good mic at a desk on the ground.

Of course remember this is the same agency that brought us all a traffic safety system that only shows traffic to aircraft that transmit their location... like a big game of peek a boo. No transmit? No safety for you! Hahaha.

So, they do tend to leave their door cracked enough to give it a hard kick with a chuckle when they make claims of doing these things for "safety".
 
Well the ironic or hypocritical or what whatever you want to call it thing is they allow Swayne to do exactly what they probably have issue with Steve about. Swayne is flying passengers, you can see them behind him in the videos, he's talking while flying himself, etc. He's not the only pilot in the cockpit though. Maybe that's the difference.
 
BrianNC said:
Well the ironic or hypocritical or what whatever you want to call it thing is they allow Swayne to do exactly what they probably have issue with Steve about. Swayne is flying passengers, you can see them behind him in the videos, he's talking while flying himself, etc. He's not the only pilot in the cockpit though. Maybe that's the difference.
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He also seems to only address the camera in cruise flight.
 
I like Jerry and his 320. Seems like a down to earth guy who's enjoying his plane and loves to talk through this videos.
 
Sure is a lot of speculation going on in this thread.
 
The CFI talks constantly through his flights, kidding around with the student, etc. He does have a disclaimer at the beginning saying, "This video contains highlights from a flight lesson. Editing removes context and can be misinterpreted."

 
austin757 said:
I like Jerry and his 320. Seems like a down to earth guy who's enjoying his plane and loves to talk through this videos.
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Jerry is going to wreck that airplane one day. He continued to fly it on a maintenance test flight with significant vibration in the right engine, he is known to not be on the glideslope, and he waits until he's 500 agl or lower to put the gear down.
 
teejayevans said:
Maybe when he got permission they gave him rules to follow? Others didn't ask.
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I'm sure that properly genuflecting and asking permission, and then following whatever rules someone at a FSDO sends over, helps immensely.

The original questions about mounting cameras outside the aircraft and whether or not that was legal, where various FSDOs all answered the question differently, is likely to be going on with anything new about cockpit videos, too.

Consistency was extremely poor between them, last time stuff like this came up. Bet you ask multiple FSDOs and you'll get multiple answers, unless they've gotten better at this sort of thing.

And then you get local oddities, like the guy who had cameras all over his aircraft and taxied past some "secret squirrel" hangars run by a well-known government contractor who was slapping pods of all sorts on various airplanes for Uncle Sam, and they didn't like that one bit...

Although it's not like anyone taxiing by couldn't hide the cameras better or just LOOK in their open hangar door... and they complained to local airport management folks about it...

And the local aviation photography group, that in order to keep the peace with airport authorities being complained to by rich folk in bizjets, agrees not to post photos to social media without scrubbing the tail numbers with photoshop...
 
deonb said:
Probably because of what he actually said?
"This week the FAA decided they are coming at me and want to shut down my YouTube channel over certain criteria"
Not saying that's what the FAA ACTUALLY said, but all we have to go on for now is what he wrote.
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Makes sense.
 
Z06_Mir said:
Jerry is going to wreck that airplane one day. He continued to fly it on a maintenance test flight with significant vibration in the right engine, he is known to not be on the glideslope, and he waits until he's 500 agl or lower to put the gear down.
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Must have missed that!
 
He's gotten to popular for his own good which put him on the FAA's radar. Which sucks as his videos are awesome.

I'm guessing like the rest they have an issue with 135, wirless cameras and attachment to the aircraft.

My school had a promo video that ended up getting a letter from the FAA requesting we pull the video from YouTube. They said we couldn't attach cameras in any fashion with out a field approval.
 
ARFlyer said:
My school had a promo video that ended up getting a letter from the FAA requesting we pull the video from YouTube. They said we couldn't attach cameras in any fashion with out a field approval.
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Seriously? Well they have a bunch of catching up to do with youtube. Tons of videos out there with cameras attached everywhere inside and outside.
 
ARFlyer said:
My school had a promo video that ended up getting a letter from the FAA requesting we pull the video from YouTube. They said we couldn't attach cameras in any fashion with out a field approval.
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BrianNC said:
Seriously? Well they have a bunch of catching up to do with youtube. Tons of videos out there with cameras attached everywhere inside and outside.
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Welcome to the FSDOs not having any national guidance so each one makes up crap.

Most say that as long as it doesn't change the aerodynamics, isn't attached to a flight control surface, and doesn't require tools to attach/detach... camera away.

But some... are the annoying sort that went after @ARFlyer 's school.

I think they finally published guidelines somewhere in some doc, but I forget where it is now. And it was more like the former rules than the latter. Thus the popularity of the various clamps folks have come up with that go on without tools on wing struts.
 
ARFlyer said:
...My school had a promo video that ended up getting a letter from the FAA requesting we pull the video from YouTube. They said we couldn't attach cameras in any fashion with out a field approval.
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Did they happen to explain why they thought pulling the video off YouTube would improve safety AFTER the flight was over with? :rolleyes1:

I might be able to understand them saying "Don't do that anymore," but pulling the video is not going to retroactively make that flight safer!
 
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